Daily Archives: April 16, 2009

The Episcopal Church has filed a lawsuit seeking to regain control of church property from the breakaway Diocese of Fort Worth.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Tarrant County district court. Defendants include Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker, who led the theologically conservative diocese to split from the national church over issues including gay clergy and women in the priesthood.

Lynn Fellman, the Ira Flatow of the Twin Cities, has a guest post at Quiche Moraine about her recent trip to the Origins Symposium.

Rusty-red rocks against an electric blue sky were an exact color match for the mix of brilliant intellect I knew to be in Phoenix on Monday. I had just flown into Sky Harbor Airport from Minneapolis, and any Minnesotan will tell you that we don’t waste a day like that indoors. It was a sparkling spring morning alive with color and radiant sunshine. But I happily joined 3,000 other science fans inside a dark auditorium for a full twelve-hour day of physics, cosmology, biology and more.

Texas is going to secede from the union! Seriously! The governor of Texas has laid down the gauntlet, and unless we get rid of that Black Guy as president and that Damn Woman as speaker of the house, it’s vamoose for Texas!

And I couldn’t be happier. Texas should not be part of the Union. Why? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but here are the top three:

Texans are stupid. They bring our total national average down too much.

Texans are regressive. Two steps forward, ten steps backwards, politically. I’d rather not live in the middle ages, thank you very much.

Texans smell bad, look funny, and have kooties. I know that looks like three reasons but I think they may be linked.

Good bye, Texas!

(I can’t wait to see how this affects immigration policy in the US and the new Lone Star Country.)

You know, I got interviewed on the phone by a reporter from Texas this morning and I’m still washing my my ear out.

“Just in time for the bicentennial observance of Charles Darwin’s birth, a new survey of Louisiana residents shows 40 percent of the respondents believe evolution is not well-supported by evidence or generally accepted within the scientific community,” the Baton Rouge Advocate (April 14, 2009) reports. The Louisiana Survey, sponsored by the Manship School of Mass Communication’s Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs at Louisiana State University, asked (PDF), “Do you think the scientific theory of evolution is well supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community, or that it is not well supported by evidence and many scientists have serious doubts about it?” Of the respondents, only 38.8% preferred the correct option, with 40.3% thinking that evolution is not well supported and 20.9% listed as saying they don’t know. The survey also asked, “When teaching students about human origins, would you generally favor or oppose teaching creationism along with evolution in public schools?”; 57.5% of the respondents said that they favored teaching creationism, 31% said that they opposed teaching creationism, and 11.4% were listed as saying they don’t know.

My podcasts: : Ikonokast

Mike and Greg converse on the subject of the geology and geography of Arizona and the red rocks of Sedona. The rocks tell the story of the ages of the earth, and this is a pretty chapter. We also talk about the end of ScienceBlogs, which has been a seminal collective that set the tone …

In the podcast, you may hear Mike refer to John as a “Vulcan Historian.” What Mike meant to say is that John J. McKay is a historian with a specialty in the history of the Balkans, and that is an important distinction. He is also interested in the many weird theories that abound to explain …

We don’t do too many shows on cuisine, but this week we asked scientist and author Bill Schutt to speak with us about his research in cannibalism. His new book, Cannibalism: A perfectly natural history, explores the behavioral and evolutionary biology of cannibalism in general, and within that context, examines cannibalism among humans. Cannibalism: A …

With the election of Donald Trump and the apparent takeover of most of the US by the anti-science Republican party, we thought we should turn to Canada for inspiration and ideas. Katie Gibbs tells us about Evidence for Democracy, which runs issue-based campaigns and educational projects that support well informed, fact-based, smart policy decisions by …

Dan Fincke is a philosopher who focuses on skeptical thinking and science. We asked Dan to speak with us about the apparent, but perhaps illusory, rift between philosophy and science. By the end of the podcast, we pretty much solve that problem. Dan Fincke’s Web Site is here, where you can find out about the …

Author and science philosopher Shawn Otto returns to discuss the presumably dire situation faced by modern civilization and science in particular with the election of an explicitly anti-truth, anti-science administration in Washington. Shawn Otto was the first guest on this podcast, click here to listen to that excellent interview. The War on Science: Who’s …

We speak with climate scientist Michael Mann about his research in global warming, climate change denial, and his new book, The Madhouse Effect. Professor Mann is also the author of Dire Predictions (2nd edition), an accessible rendition of the scientific basis for climate change volume of the IPCC report, and The Hockey Stick and the …

Emily Cassidy talks with us about the conflict between feeding the world’s population and destroying the word’s environment in the process. We discuss GMOs, the Farm Bill, and agriculture, mainly in the US.

Christie Wilcox speaks to us about her new book, Venomous, and the science of venom and venomous animals. We also explore how venom and venomous creatures play a role in some rather bizarre human behaviors. What’s the difference between poisonous and venomous?

Dr Don Prothero speaks with us about geology, creationism, aliens and UFOs, bigfoot, the process of writing science books; texts as well as for popular consumption. Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future by Donald Prothero.